Tue Dec 11, 2012 at 07:30:40 AM EST

DeMint: While Senator DeMint might be leaving the Senate for the Heritage Foundation, his impact on congressional races might continue. DeMint is known for pushing conservative primary challengers in recent times, but he has been a long time policy wonk. Expect him to focus on policy, but still be involved.

Michigan-Right to Work: President Obama has entered the fight regarding Michigan becoming a right to work state. He obviously opposes it and local Democrats are happy he got involved in the battle unlike the Wisconsin battles of 2011 and 2012.

NRCC: The new Congress has not been seated yet, but the NRCC is busy raising funds. The lavishness of the fundraiser seems to be drawing criticism.

Latinos: One aspect of the Democratic strength among Latinos is the strength of local candidates in 2010. Specifically, Harry Reid and Michael Bennet served as blueprints for what the Obama campaign did in 2012.

RNC: Trying to figure out what went wrong in 2012, the RNC is bringing together a Growth and Opprotunity project. This group of party officials and former party officials will look at several areas for strengths and weaknesses.

Obama: As Barack Obama cannot run for President again, who will inherit his massive voter database? Nobody wants the list to disappear, but the exact details are being worked out now.

I think the bigger question is whether he runs for senate or stays mayor of Newark. He's had opportunities to run for governor (2005 and 2009) and senate (it's not as though Manendez was a power-house in 2006, or Lautenberg in 2008 for that matter).

male, social, fiscal and foreign policy center-right Republican, in but not of academia, VA-08.

I believe there were some legal issues that argued for separation of the bills.

Also, my understanding is that the House vote today was in concurrence with the Senate bill passed last week (similar to the U.S. House vote to accept verbatim the Obamacare bill), which obviates the need to have a conference committee or other wrangling over differences in the bills.

Republicans ask for a reconsideration of #righttowork, which means they'll control the debate and final vote tomorrow.
So final passage on private sector bill delayed till tomorrow. #righttowork. Bill passed 58-52 and will head to @onetoughnerd Wednesday.

It's a done deal. Pending Snyder's signature (and him not caving to strike the appropriation via line-item veto), this is the proudest I've been of Michigan politicians in my lifetime. About time someone had the courage.

PPP's record two years out is spotty at best (though it's not their fault as 2 years is forever). Some that I just randomly found leading up to the 2010 midterm. I tried to find only Gov races at least a year before the election:

There aren't enough minorities and white liberals in South Carolina for Democrats to win on their votes alone. If the old Blue Dog coalition is open to voting for a Democrat in 2014, Shaheen can win. If it's an atmosphere like 2010, Graham and the DeMint replacement will drag Haley across the line.

"Her final choices for the seat are Rep. Tim Scott, Rep. Trey Gowdy, former state Attorney General Henry McMaster, former South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford and Catherine Templeton, a conservative attorney chosen by Haley to head the state Department of Health and Environmental Control."

Is that she put this list out to reach out to every element of the GOP. I don't think Gowdy and Tempelton are seriously being considered. And although she has some loyalties towards Sanford and McMaster for helping her win the nomination in 2010, it will be tough to pass on Scott after all of the hype from conservatives. It would devastate her reelection prospects if she goes with an establishment figure like McMaster.

Is anyone surprised Thom Tillis isn't polling better in the GOP primary since he is the Speaker of the House? I am, at least regarding his low poll numbers in the 704 area code which includes Charlotte. Granted, they included former mayor of Charlotte and longtime Congresswoman Sue Myrick but she's retiring in January and her running for a United States Senate at her age (71) is very unlikely. Even when Myrick's inclusion in the polling is taken into account, I still would think Tillis would get more than 2% in the 704 area code because he represents part of the area and has held town hall meetings across the state.

who their speaker of the house is. Heck, I know the names of all 535 members of congress, all governors, and almost all statewide officials - and I'd be hard-pressed to name more than a dozen state house speakers.

State legislators just generally don't get much buzz on their own, even with town hall meetings. His name rec will increase once he actually declares and people start covering him as a candidate for senate rather than just a state legislator.

I don't have final Fresno numbers but my estimation of them gives the district 52.2%-46.6%. Valadao got 59% in Fresno. For it to be 54%-43%, Romney would've needed to get about 46%. That's possible, but would be surprising since so many of the Obama precincts in Fresno are in CA-16.

From what I've heard about them (and I've heard Mulvaney speak a handful of times), they are not as interested in moving up in the Washington scene as is Scott. Mulvaney has adolescent triplets and seems like he doesn't want to be in Congress for a long time. He advocated for term limits at a recent forum I attended. Gowdy has been characterized in the media as not being enamored with his position and I think he would prefer to be a prosecutor like he was before he went to Congress. Maybe he would prefer to be a United States Attorney when a Republican president gets in office.

I asked this upthread but I'll ask it again. Do you have a source on this? For that to happen Obama needs to get about 54% in the Fresno portion of the district. That's possible, but Valadao won the Fresno part in a landslide.

the statement of vote for fresno county has been uploaed to the agenda of the board of supervisors for the meetin on 12-11-2012 A Dr. Phillips has posted his % derived from such Statement of vote at dkos-elections on todays live digest.

I didn't see the breakdowns in it like there are in other statement of vote documents. I assume he went precinct by precinct and assigned them. I'd like to see his vote breakdown by congressional/senate/assembly district.

The UMP is stuck in a weird and confusing situation as things currently stands. It remains united as a political party, but only half or so of the party recognizes the party's de facto leader as the legitimate leader. The other half of the party remains in the party, but still does not recognize the legitimacy of the party's de facto leader. What is the way forward?

they won't want to cooperate together against the left, they'll want to jockey for position to become the main party of the center-right, which spells bad new bears electorally for both factions.

In any case, the Christian Right would be flanked by the FN on their right and the MoDems on their left, and there's just really no large potential base for a classical liberal party. If the UMP starts splitting up it won't be able to do so so neatly, once there's no dominant party it's just going to be a four-way free for all between the MoDems, FN, Cope faction, and Fillon faction.

It's also not ideologically clear cut; Fillon is a moderate, but a euroskeptic aligned with Sarkozy, Cope is a "liberal", but not a socially moderate-to-liberal business type who would play well in the suburbs. He's a socially and culturally conservative firebrand who was supported by much of the Gaullist right-wing faction. There are also many non-aligned MPs; many of whom are the real socially moderate liberals you're thinking of. Will they start a fifth center-right party, or will they just join New Centre? Either way that makes five parties and counting with roughly equal support and no dynamic leaders among them.

All of this works to the electoral benefit of the left, and the entirety UMP realizes that. No matter how much they hate and distrust each other, they know they have to find a way to work this out inter-UMP. The UMP splitting up remains unlikely in my opinion, unless Fillon and Cope really do care about nothing but their own presidential ambitions.

After looking at parts of Shorewood through Google Maps, I realized why I thought Shorewood was merely just the more liberal version of "Whitefolks" Bay. I only traveled through Shorewood along North Lake Drive. Very different from the rest of town.

Just FYI, I posted a pretty thorough response to your comment on my Lower Merion diary a few days ago. If you have any thoughts, let me know through a reply. If not, no worries. I just may have made some wrong assumptions about MA.

From IL-09, familial roots in MI-14, college in PA-02/07, and currently living in Barcelona.
Bob Dold for Congress, Mark Kirk for Senate, Andy Hill for WA Governor, Scott Walker for President!

Anyone whose done door to door in rural, suburban, and urban areas will tell you it is a lot easier to cover urban and suburban areas compared to rural areas. When I was with the Hillsdale CRs we could cover the City of Hillsdale within 6 hours, but it would take us days to cover a similar number of voters in the nearby rural townships.

All of them are Republicans, although moderate ones. When Schultz retires, at least one of them will surely run. Basing on the 2012 PVI, I'll say the best candidate would be state Rep. Howard Marklein. He would do best among the most Democratic parts of the SD17, and surely the Republicans will vote for him than a Democratic candidate, and the Independents like moderates.